. >> let's turn to the phone hacking scandal that's rocking rupert murdoch's media empire. cnn anchor piers morgan now defending himself against accusations he knew about illegal phone hacking when he was editor at two paper, one of them owned by murdoch. abc's nick watt has the latest from london. >> reporter: the tide of scandal is now lapping at the well-pressed pant cuffs of the man who took larry king's chair and the america's got talent self-proclaimed loud mouth. because before all that -- >> two major british newspapers for 11 years. >> reporter: and listen carefully to this recently unearthed interview. >> and what about this nice middle class boy who would have to be dealing with i mean essentially people who rake through bin ladens for livings and take secret photographs and nasty down in the gutter stuff. >> well, to be honest, to put that in perspective. not a lot of it was done. a lot was done by third parties rather than the staff itself. that's not to defend it because you were running the results of their work. >> reporter: morgan refused to speak to us but